Authors: Christobel Kent
There
was a gust of laughter that brought the sweat out on the back of Alison’s neck, and Roger Carter at the centre of it, his sandy head thrown back. ‘I swear,’ she heard. ‘The constitution of an ox. The Watts woman keeps an eye out for him, God knows why. Last year they had to fish him out of the mud before the prizes. I don’t know what he puts in that home brew but it hasn’t killed him yet.’
They were talking about the barge match, the race still two days away. Wednesday now – Wednesday night, one day gone. Alison looked with longing towards release. Thursday to get through; Friday the race; Saturday the wedding; Sunday, they’d be back in London.
The party had been in full swing when they arrived, the house not a new-build after all, Alison registered, but only thirty or so years old, a big ugly solid building in unfaded brick, with an over-imposing porch and heavy lintels. Lucy Carter met them at the door with a glitter of excitement about her and a glass in her hand. The fragile, tentative woman they’d seen at the hotel had gone: elegant in high-heeled shoes she
had paused dramatically to take Alison in, her sandals, the strong, old-fashioned colour, the scarf twisted in her cropped hair. Paul stepped back slightly, showing her.
‘What a lovely—’ Lucy Carter put her hand towards Alison’s head. ‘Lovely, is it a scarf?’ Her smile glazing slightly.
Feeling suddenly self-conscious, Alison reached up and pulled it off. She must look mad. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and before she could stop herself, ‘It was my mother’s.’ That was stupid. Dangerous. She didn’t know why she had this urge to give herself away.
But Lucy Carter was holding out her arms for their coats, the glass in one hand tipping precariously. ‘You go on, darling,’ she said to Paul, ‘you know where it is, don’t you?’
Darling.
There wasn’t much doubt where the guests were gathered: a din of party noise came through a door beside the wide baronial stairway. A woman’s loudly delighted laughter. Alison knew it would be Morgan and as she came through the door there she was, glowing and excitable at the centre of it all, looking over the heads at them. At Paul. Alison had a moment to take in the room, the big windows, antiques, flowers, a poorly executed amateur oil painting of Lucy Carter above the fireplace, hands in her lap, big-eyed. Roger Carter gesturing up at it with pride. Paul leaned down and whispered in her ear, ‘Quite the Renaissance man, our Roger,’ and she realised the doctor must have painted the hideous thing himself.
And then Morgan was raising her arms in greeting and pushing towards them. Alison’s eye was caught by a man watching her passage through the big room: a pale, watchful face, light hair brushed back, in a city suit and tie. The husband-to-be, Christian: the man she’d seen with Morgan in the pub. Alison was diverted by Lucy Carter at her elbow, steering her into the room.
‘You must meet, let me think …’ and again she was absorbed by Alison’s dress, putting out her hand to touch the fabric. ‘Is
it old?’ Alison mumbled something, still uneasy. The dress made her feel like a doll dressed up, the colour attracting too much attention, the crêpe clinging. They had stopped beside a big bay with window seats and Lucy Carter sank on to a cushion. Awkwardly, Alison sat beside her. Through the window on a big lawn a marquee was being erected, three white walls up already, and a floor, and a stack of gold chairs. The garden was surrounded by dark trees and the grass was deep green in the midsummer twilight. Looking back into the room Alison saw that Morgan was talking to Paul beside another fireplace, leaning to look up into his face.
‘You mustn’t mind,’ said Lucy Carter quickly. ‘They’re old friends.’
Alison just smiled. ‘It’s a lovely house,’ she said politely, thinking actually how horrible it was. Lucy Carter didn’t seem to hear. She lifted her glass to her lips, looked puzzled to see it already empty.
She waved across the room and a sullen-looking girl in a white apron began to make her way towards them with a tray. Lucy took two glasses and thrust one at Alison.
‘How long have you lived here?’ Alison asked, and it was at that moment that Roger Carter laughed, not far from where they sat, and his head turned to take them in. Lucy Carter carefully set her glass down.
‘More than twenty years,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that funny. Morgan was a little girl.’ She gazed across at her daughter without noticeable affection. Alison saw Paul glance across at them, and he held up a finger to Morgan and leaned to say something.
Alison looked away, feeling something perverse stir inside her. ‘It’s one of those places, isn’t it,’ she said. ‘In the pub last night someone was talking to Paul about … well, it was ages ago now, I suppose.’ Lucy Carter’s head turned slowly and her big luminous eyes rested on Alison, suddenly anxious. ‘The killings,’ said Alison.
‘Oh,
that,’ Lucy Carter said, and her hands fidgeted in her lap. She reached for her glass again. ‘The killings. It was a terrible time, awful, the reverberations in the village, it seemed to go on for ever. That poor family. Those children.’ Her eyes brimmed. ‘But really it’s all forgotten now. So long ago, as you say.’
‘What can you two be talking about?’ Alison started at the voice at her shoulder. It was Paul, his grey-green eyes meeting hers, thoughtful, intent, moving from her face to her breasts in the dress and back up again. Lucy Carter gazed at him and he smiled.
‘We were talking about the … the village’s history,’ said Alison. She felt the alcohol in her system making her reckless. ‘About how terrible the murders were. How hard for a place to be known for … something like that.’ She glanced to see Lucy Carter looking faintly confused, as if wondering that that had indeed been what she’d said.
Paul nodded. ‘Well, certainly it doesn’t seem to have gone away, to judge from the pub last night.’
Lucy Carter’s face fell abruptly. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘It’s the last thing …’ She became agitated. ‘It’s hardly what I want the wedding guests to be talking about. I really thought … who’s bringing it up after all this time?’
Paul sat between them on the window seat. ‘Lucy, don’t worry,’ he said gently. His face was concerned, his voice solicitous. ‘It was only some old drunk, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him before.’
‘Old drunk?’
And now it was Roger Carter, looming over them, affable. ‘Darling,’ he said. ‘There’s something going on in the kitchen.’ And Lucy Carter fled.
On his feet, eye to eye with the doctor, Paul grimaced.
‘Sorry, Roger,’ he said. ‘Said the wrong thing. Poor Lucy.’
Carter rolled his eyes, then smiled down at Alison without
seeing her. ‘Never have daughters,’ he said. ‘Weddings are a bloody pain in the arse.’ He looked back at Paul, who had held his hand out to her. She stood. Morgan was approaching.
‘I suppose it’s that old story rearing its ugly head again, is it? Well, no doubt it’s all terribly interesting if you’re into history.’ With a dismissive look at Paul. ‘But it’s hardly breaking news, is it? Happens every day.’ Morgan came up and threaded her arm inside her father’s elbow proprietorially.
‘It does seem to,’ said Alison and both men looked at her. ‘Women never seem to do it, do they?’
‘Well, there was a suggestion in this case …’ Carter tailed off. ‘But no, you’re right. A certain kind of man, anyway. Sadly, it is rather a familiar story.’ He was pompous. Alison kept her face still.
‘How d’you mean?’ she said. She felt Paul close to her. Perhaps after all he knew her well enough by now to hear the danger in her voice.
‘It was pretty much a classic case,’ said Carter. ‘The man’s a failure, financially. He’s a drunk. And she’s … she’s not interested in him any more.’
‘Unfaithful,’ said Morgan, looking at Paul over her glass.
Carter shrugged. ‘Some people simply don’t have the … what would you call it? The mental resources to deal with it.’
Unfaithful. Alison felt hatred surge and balloon inside her. ‘Oh, unfaithful,’ she said. ‘Well, I suppose.’ Carter looked down at her, patronising. She imagined him as a GP, this must simply be his bedside manner.
‘Did you know the family?’ she said, and felt Paul’s hand tighten on her arm. ‘Or are you just guessing?’
At last the doctor looked uncomfortable. ‘Oh, well, I suppose, you’re quite right. I didn’t really know them, and one shouldn’t, God knows.’ He turned his head. ‘Look,’ he said, already moving off, ‘I think I’m supposed to be making some sort of announcement.’
Mum,
unfaithful.
BOOM
, went the flash in Alison’s head. Dead on the floor in her best skirt. Two glasses on the draining board.
Roger Carter was already at his mantelpiece, holding up a glass and chiming it. Morgan stood tall and triumphant at his side, scanning her audience. Alison felt it move then, uncoiling inside her, the murderous flash of white rage. She knew she should never have come back.
Paul got her out in the end.
He stood at her side with his head raised, attentive to Roger Carter’s hearty self-satisfaction and she thought, if he looked down at her, if he so much as shifted position it would be over, he would know, she would lose it. But he didn’t move.
In the hotel room before they’d come Paul had asked her where she’d gone in the car, waiting till she had finished the first glass, and she’d felt her insides contract.
‘Nowhere much,’ she said, impossibly calm as adrenalin counteracted the alcohol. But suddenly so scared she couldn’t stop herself holding out the glass for another. How weird was she being? It seemed to her as though it was written all over her face, but she had no way of telling. He watched. She drank.
But now in the Carter’s sitting room Paul didn’t look down. Slowly, slowly she felt herself subside, and when at last Morgan’s gratitude and anecdotes and gay laughter stopped he leaned down and said, in a whisper, ‘Thank Christ that’s over. Let’s get out of here.’
‘I’ll get the coats,’ Alison had said, ‘if you say goodbye.’ But Lucy Carter had disappeared from the crowded room, and she didn’t know where to find the coats without her. She retreated into the hall.
It was empty, but standing at the foot of the wide staircase with its mahogany banister Alison heard their hostess’s voice, raised. She followed it to a kitchen and there she was, Lucy
Carter, her cheeks red under the room’s bright lights. The girl in her apron was standing over a broken glass looking sulky. ‘They’re upstairs,’ said Lucy, in response to her query, trying to convert her annoyance into a smile. ‘On the bed. My bed.’ Alison backed out again.
The upper floor of the house was warm and stuffy, carpeted and wallpapered with a gallery of doors but to Alison’s relief the first room she looked into was the right one. A vast flounced bed, silver-framed photographs on a dressing table; this was what a happy marriage looked like. Alison couldn’t wait to get out of there. Their coats weren’t far from the top of the pile, she grabbed them, flying around the gallery and down the stairs. Paul was waiting for her at the bottom, with the tall pale man Morgan would be marrying.
‘I said we’d give Christian a lift,’ he said.
It had seemed like an eternity stuck in the baronial sitting room but when Alison got in the back and looked at her watch it wasn’t even nine. As they drove back the high green hedges were just turning darker either side of them and in the front seat the men were talking, but she couldn’t have said what about. She could see the back of Christian’s head: she tried to remember his surname, something Germanic. His head was squareish, and he sat very upright. He and Morgan were getting married: the thought was suddenly awful to Alison. They’d met over a conference table, he’d said when Alison had asked when she’d found herself awkwardly, briefly alone with him in the Carter’s sitting room, and he’d given her that underpowered smile.
Morgan refers to it as a merger. Do you see?
She’d had to turn away, at the awful metaphor. How could you ever know enough about another person? To shut yourself up with them. And then Paul turned his head a little to say something, she saw the line beside his mouth that had become familiar, the half smile and she thought, he’s different, though.
As they came into the hotel behind the reception desk Jan
looked up from under the blond helmet of hair, alert with curiosity, with some piece of news, and on instinct Alison moved to block her.
With Paul at her back she crossed to the desk, looking in her bag. It had begun as a distraction but something was missing, something was wrong. ‘I’ll just go upstairs a minute,’ she said over her shoulder to him. ‘Will you get me a brandy?’ Smiling to forestall any word from Jan until he was gone, out of earshot. Turning back she heard the swish of the bar door behind him. The manageress had a scrap of paper in her hand, holding it out, her expression turning slightly bewildered.
Nodding as if the message was exactly what she’d expected, thank you, taking the number Jan handed her, thrusting it casually into her pocket as if it could wait. But as she turned the corner of the big staircase and was out of sight of all of them, she ran.
Sitting in the hotel room with her hot cheek pressed against the big window and her bag in her lap Alison dialled the number, looking down into the lit circle of gravel where the cars were parked. She stared down at the contents – purse, bits of paper, old tampons – but it wasn’t there, her scarf wasn’t there, but she couldn’t think for the phone’s tinny ring in her ear. It’d be in the car.
The voice answered, the voice from long-ago, lower than before, rougher, but that old jeering familiarity. ‘I knew it was you,’ she said, then softly, ‘
Ez
.’
Coming back down later Alison had made herself yawn as she came into the bar and they’d both looked across at her. Christian had got to his feet, incorrigibly polite in a European sort of way, nodding. He had the very faintest accent. He was South African by birth but had lived everywhere: Switzerland since university, he had told her that in the car, apologetically.
She didn’t sit down. ‘I don’t think I could eat anything after all those canapés,’ she said, looking at the sandwiches
that had just been set down on their table, and it seemed to her that Christian averted his eyes from her thin arms when she said it. She yawned again to stop the blush. ‘I might just head up.’